


Rulers, Yardsticks, Slide Rules, and Protractors. But No Compasses.

by rosa_himmelblau



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 11:32:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18548917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Men.Really, just—men!





	Rulers, Yardsticks, Slide Rules, and Protractors. But No Compasses.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Keri T (Keri_1006)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keri_1006/gifts).



> Keri had this wonderful idea and she generously let me run with it. This is the result. I hope it's as much fun for you as it was for me.

"Starsk, you here?" Hutch knew the answer to that; the tomato was parked out front, and wherever it was, Starsky couldn't be too far away.

When Starsky didn't answer, Hutch felt his pulse speed up. Only a little, but he was preparing to find something he didn't want to: signs of a struggle; an unconscious partner; a dead partner; no partner at all.

He withdrew his Magnum and slowly eased his way toward the bedroom. It was empty. The bed was made. Of course, this could all be perfectly innocent. If Starsky was feeling better, he could be over at a neighbor's, or taking a walk, or a run—though if he was running with the pneumonia he was fighting, he'd be wishing he was stashed in the trunk of somebody's car when Hutch was finished with him.

It was ridiculous to be this worried, but in Hutch's mind it was better to be prepared for an emergency and find nothing than be prepared for nothing and get conked on the head and wake up in the trunk of a car yourself. He'd done that and he didn't want to do it again.

Before making his way to the bathroom, Hutch gave the bedroom a quick inspection. Nothing was amiss, but Starsky's sneakers were on the floor and the sweat pants he'd been wearing that morning were next to them in a heap, red briefs still nestled inside.

The possible scenarios in Hutch's head scrambled. Why would somebody take Starsky's pants off him before abducting him? Even if it was a sex crime, who partially undressed their victim before taking them? And unless Starsky had felt the sudden need to wear different attire from the waist down, he hadn't gone anywhere voluntarily. "Hey, Starsk?" Hutch called carefully.

Still no answer. Hutch bent to feel the shoes, then the sweat pants. They were dry. There was no reason Hutch could see to change them.

He knew he was being—what was the term? Hyper-vigilant. That had started when Starsky died on him, but he'd managed to get it under control after lots of sessions with the department headshrinker. It was just that whenever something happened—like this pneumonia, which had had Starsky gasping for air—Hutch couldn't relax. 

He left the bedroom and, back to the wall, crept toward the bathroom. The shower wasn't running. The door was only partially shut, light peeping around the edges.

"Starsky?" Hutch said, adding, "Dave?" in case something was wrong. It was hard to believe it had taken them all these years to come up with this simple emergency code: if there was a problem, they'd call each other by their first names.

"Wha?" Starsky answered.

Hutch put his gun away. He knew that distracted tone; whatever Starsky was doing had his attention to the extent that if somebody did try to come and abduct him, he'd probably be locked in a trunk before he even noticed.

Hutch pushed the bathroom door open.

"What're you doing home?" Starsky asked, not like he was interested.

"What're you doing?" Hutch responded. He'd started to say it meaning, why weren't you answering me?, but now that he got a look at his partner, he had other questions.

Starsky was dressed only in his black T-shirt and red socks, the T-shirt bunched at his armpits. He was standing on the side of the bathtub with the medicine cabinet door open so the mirror faced him, and he was staring at himself with a look of—Hutch wasn't sure what it was a look of exactly.

It reminded Hutch of how one early spring back home he'd seen a cat investigating a logy wasp. The cat knew about wasps, but he had never seen one like this, so seemingly harmless—which didn't stop him from being very cautious as he tapped it with his paw.

Starsky was poking his half-erection the same way.

"What're you doing?" Hutch asked again.

"You think it curves to the left?" Starsky asked.

Hutch stepped forward to look more closely. "I don't know. Maybe a little. It wouldn't surprise me if it did."

Now Starsky looked him in the face, anxious. "Why? What do you mean?"

"I mean, you're left-handed. How many years have you been pulling on It? Look at Carol Burnett," he added.

"What?" Starsky asked, now as baffled as Hutch. "Carol Burnett? What's she got to do with anything?"

"All those years on TV, pulling her earlobe, they measured and found it was longer than the other one."

Starsky had the nerve to stare at him like he was the crazy one. "It's not an earlobe, Blondie."

"I know that! I'm just saying, you pull on it more than once a week—or I do, and I'm usually in front of you, using my right hand, so—"

"That's not what I'm talking about!" Starsky yelled. "Does it look shorter to you?"

Again, Hutch looked more closely, feeling weirdly embarrassed. "No."

"You're just saying that."

"No, I'm not. It doesn't look any different."

"Yeah, but that's the thing, it's not something that has symptoms or anything, you don't even know there's something wrong with your penis—"

Penis? Hutch thought.

"—until the doctor tells you—"

"Wait. Why was the doctor looking at your—penis?" For some reason it was awkward, saying penis. It seemed too formal for their relationship, like if Hutch suddenly had to call him sir.

"He wasn't! I'm just saying, that's how you usually find out. Take off your pants."

"Find out what?" Hutch asked. "Why do I have to take off my pants?"

"Come on, what're you afraid of? It's not catching, I just want to compare."

"Starsky, aren't we a little old for that?" But Starsky had hopped down off the bathtub and grabbed a hold of his zipper, and if Hutch didn't intervene, he was going to be minus one fly in a minute. "All right, all right, let me do it!" He pushed Starsky's hands away and unzipped.

Once his slacks and underwear were bunched at his feet, and his shirt—the tails of which were impairing Starsky's view—was in the bathtub, Starsky looked with critical dissatisfaction at Hutch's—penis, in a way that kind of hurt his feelings. "What?" he finally yelled.

"It looks bigger than mine," Starsky said.

"It always looks bigger than yours," Hutch snapped. And, in truth, it was bigger, though not by much. They'd measured one giggly night not long after they consummated their relationship. He remembed Starsky saying, "We're gonna need a yardstick for you, or at least a slide rule." Hutch had refrained from explaining how a slide rule was used, mostly because he was laughing too hard.

"Yeah, but it looks a lot bigger," Starsky said, and gave what Hutch could now think of only as his penis a tentative poke. "Did you do something different with your foreskin?"

"Like what?" Hutch asked, now more confused than he'd ever been in his life. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's got a kind'a curve too," Starsky said, poking it again.

"Quit that!" Hutch said, taking a step away from him. "And tell me what you're talking about. What did the doctor say?"

"Doctor said I could go back to work Monday, my lungs are clear."

"But what did he say about your penis?" Clinical, that's what this was, not formal. He couldn't be formal with Starsky's body, but if something was wrong, it was right to be clinical, no matter how foreign it felt.

"Nothing! He never saw it!" Starsky yelled.

"Then why are you acting like you just got this body and don't know what to do with it?" Hutch yelled back.

"Because the guy on TV said it might be broken!"

"What?" Hutch asked, first peering into his partner's worried face, then at his now-soft penis. He redirected his gaze to Starsky's face. "If the people on TV are talking to you, you got bigger problems than pneumonia or your penis."

Starsky snorted. "He wasn't talking to me! He was talking about people like me?"

"What, escapees from the nut hatch? What are you talking about? What's wrong with your penis?" Hutch had to resist the urge to poke it.

"Did you know you could injure yourself during intercourse?" Starsky, inexplicably, whispered this.

Instinctively, Hutch glanced around the small room to see if they were being eavesdropped on. "What?" he whispered back, then repeated himself in a normal tone.

"Yeah, if you have lots of intercourse, you can hurt yourself and get a scar and a curve." Starsky looked down at his penis. "I don't see a scar, but I can't get a good look at the whole thing. I've had a lot of intercourse, Hutch. You know that."

"Stop saying intercourse!" Hutch said. "You've had a lot of sex, yeah, I know, I've been there for most of it the last few years. How did the guy on TV know what a stud you are?"

"He wasn't talking to me personally," Starsky snapped. "He was just warning us we might have this condition. It's called Peyronie's."

Hutch nodded. He'd heard of it. "You were watching one of those news channels, weren't you?"

"Well, yeah. Just because I been laid up doesn't mean I don't need to know what's going on in the world."

"And how many times have you seen this commercial?"

"I dunno. They run it practically every time they take a break."

"No wonder you're imagining things. I told you we shouldn't have a TV in the bedroom."

"You were singing a different tune when you were laid up with the flu in January," Starsky said. "And I'm not imagining things, this is a real condition."

"I know it's a real condition. It's a real condition you don't have."

"And it makes you curve, and it makes you smaller. Are you sure I don't look smaller?"

"You don't look smaller to me," Hutch said. "But there's only one way to settle this. Go in the bedroom. I'll get the ruler and a protractor, if I can find one." He sat on the toilet lid to free himself of shoes and pants and underwear.

Starsky chuckled. "But no compass. And bring the yardstick for yourself," he added as he walked out of the bathroom.

"Flatterer," Hutch said.< /p>


End file.
